According to The New York Times of April 6, President Obama recently announced “that he was revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons, even in self-defense.”
The Times says the new policy “is explicitly committing [us] not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological weapons or launched a crippling cyber attack.”
I think this policy change places the U.S. in additional jeopardy because the fear of our retaliating with nuclear weapons is reduced or prevented. I also believe we no longer manufacture chemical weaponry so we are not capable of responding in kind to a poison gas attack on an American city.
Remember the Cold War, and the concept of Mutually-Assured Destruction that kept the peace? It has now suffered a serious blow, while the probability of an Anthrax attack has gone up.
Those who constantly denounce President Truman for having used two nuclear bombs to bring the Japanese to their knees, the latter having rejected our demand for unconditional surrender, have won the debate.
Harry Truman’s decision, many believe, saved the lives of at least 500,000 American soldiers who, it is estimated, would have lost their lives in storming the beaches of the Japanese home islands.
Millions of Japanese would have died as well. I applaud President Truman’s decision.
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